Lifter of heavy things, dog lover, academic technologist

I love food. LOVE IT. I love all aspects of food especially the sweet, delicious, tasty sweets. My body on the other hand, well it can’t handle it. Mentally I can’t handle it. And by it I mean all the sugary, delicious, tasty treats that are out there daily for the world to enjoy.

I love to cook, to bake, to create in the kitchen. I love to cook and bake for people. I love to bake goodies for my Tony. Giving makes me happy. However, with all the love of cooking and baking… there comes the reality of the eating what I make. There are also the daily temptations at work, at the gas station, at the coffee shop, wherever I go to lunch with friends or family.

I love food. My body just can’t handle some of it in du to my having metabolic syndrome. That comes in the form of mainly insulin resistance, followed by close besties – acne, bloat, and weight gain. Having been obese for a good part of my adult (and probably young) life, I finally start winning the battle of the bulge in 2011 when I realized that if I didn’t make changes, my life would be even more miserable than it was. Since then I’ve lost 75-80 pounds and have yo-yo’d a little bit up and down the last year because I indulged a bit too much. I’m not done losing weight, but more importantly I’m not done trying to make my body strong and my life long.

Every day is a battle for me and I don’t think a lot of people that know me understand that. When there is something sweet around, like say cupcakes in the office, I think about them all day long. ALL DAY LONG. I try to abstain from eating them because my body can’t handle the sugar and it does bad things to me. If I eat that one cupcake, that opens the door for me to just go insane. I’ll use that slip as an excuse to eat more bad things and more bad things.. before you know it I’ve gained 15 pounds over the holiday season (this happened in 2013). This year, I fought long and hard not to eat my way into a new pair of jeans. I only gained 5 pounds have already lost 3 of those. I had a goal after Thanksgiving of no cheats til my birthday. Then I had a nice week of just eating whatever. It did come back in the form of those great besties I mentioned earlier, but it was better than how I treated my body last year. That’s a win in my book.

I don’t know if I truly have a food addiction or if I have some other problem, but it is real to me. It can consume me. I will think about those cupcakes on the other side of the wall all day, even while I’m not hungry, even while I have plenty to eat, simply because I know how good they will taste. How delightful that sugar will smell. How yummy it is. What I fail to think about instead is how my stomach will hurt, how my hands will be sticky, how I will get bloated and maybe break out (yes, sometimes from just one cheat). Those are the things that I need to think about.

I also have a problem with saying no because I’m worried about hurting people’s feelings. If they make something either for me personally or for a group I’m with, I feel badly about saying no. I don’t want them to think I don’t/won’t like it, but I do get tired of explaining to people that I eat a certain way and it’s hard for me to just have a little bite of something, a little cheat. Even one bite isn’t little to me.

Anyway, I’m writing this because today is Amanda’s birthday and her sweet mom sent her along with cupcakes for the office. They look AMAZING. They smell amazing, but I’m going to try hard to not eat one because I have a wedding to look amazing for in 52 days and body goals that I want to reach and even one cupcake can set me backwards.